Bill Van Niekerken

Library Director

About this Author

Bill Van Niekerken is the Library Director of the San Francisco Chronicle. He does research for reporters and editors and manages the photos, negatives and text archives. He has a weekly column “From the Archive”, that focuses on photo coverage of historic events. For this column Bill scans and publishes 20-30 images from photos and negatives that haven’t been seen in many years.

Bill started working at the Mercury News in 1980, when nothing in news libraries was digital. Research was done using paper clippings, and cameras shot film. He moved to the Chronicle in 1985, just as the library was beginning their digital text archive.